Obama congratulates Romney for GOP win

Polite chat signals start of hard campaign ahead

Mitt Romney arrives for a campaign event at the Somers Furniture warehouse Tuesday, May 29, 2012 in Las Vegas. He clinched the GOP presidential nomination on May 30, 2012.

MARY ALTAFFER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama called Mitt Romney to congratulate him on winning the Republican nomination on Wednesday, just as the Democrat's campaign opened a new critique of Romney by focusing attention on his economic record as governor of Massachusetts.

The president told Romney "he looked forward to an important and healthy debate about America's future," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. Romney's campaign said the call was "brief and cordial." Both men wished each other's families well during the upcoming race.

Romney's primary win in Texas on Tuesday pushed him past the 1,144-delegate threshold he needed to claim the nomination.

Obama took the formal step of congratulating his opponent even as his team looked to shift to the Massachusetts story under Romney.

For months, Obama and his allies have signaled plans to target Romney's Massachusetts record, with advisers noting that the state's economy lagged in job creation and saw an increase in debt while he was governor from 2003-2007.

The critique will build upon a line of attack this month of Romney's record at private equity firm Bain Capital, which Obama's team contends led to job losses and bankrupt companies even while Bain profited.

"There's nothing that Gov. Romney did either in the private sector that created jobs or in the public sector that distinguished himself as a job creator," Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said.

Romney's campaign, meanwhile, was bringing attention to failed stimulus projects under Obama and federal money given to green energy companies like Solyndra, a solar firm that received hundreds of millions of dollars from the government only to go bankrupt. Solyndra executives contributed to Obama's campaign.

The campaign is making three points about Solyndra: Obama's economic efforts have been politically motivated, have wasted taxpayer dollars and, ultimately, have failed.

The competing attack-lines came as Romney pivoted from a long primary slog to the Republican nomination and a new summer window to sway voters who have not yet fully tuned into the presidential campaign. Romney hopes to present himself as a worthy replacement for Obama who can help revitalize a slow-moving economy, the most important issue for voters.

The country is "just beginning a general election, we've gone through a primary ... not a lot of people focus time on the characteristics of a new candidate like myself, and people will get to know me better," Romney said in an interview on Fox News that aired Wednesday.

Romney faces key decisions between now and his acceptance of the party's nomination in late August in Florida: In what states should he compete most aggressively? Who should be his running mate?

At the same time, he must dive anew into fundraising and work to win over voters who are distracted by their own summer plans and day-to-day pocketbook worries -- while withstanding Obama's attacks on his own claims as a jobs creator.

Romney spent Wednesday in California, plunging into a week filled with fundraisers and efforts to unite Republicans after a divisive primary season. Already he's proven adept at both, hauling in enough cash to cut into the advantage that Obama has while getting most of his former Republican rivals to close ranks around him.

Those efforts -- and the turning of his primary campaign into a general election operation -- have been his prime focus. He's making only a handful of public appearances for now, but aides say they expect the campaign to ramp up to a full sprint by July 4. Romney has said he plans to take a week off around the holiday, suggesting that may be when he makes final deliberations on whom to choose as his vice presidential candidate.